That is a stupid statement and you should feel bad for saying it. If you are bad at a job it is immoral to take the position. If it was legal to stab people in the face who made that stupid statement you did I would not since it would be immoral.

He is over that age of majority and could change his dumb name at anytime.

It's a rare individual who would turn down a chance to get fame and fortune for doing a job he's bad at. Especially when the consequences are as mild as a bad movie. I mean, it's not as if the guy is flying passenger airlines or designing tall buildings.

In other words, if some producer said to me, "Sir Garlon, I will give you a gazillion dollars, lots of babes, sportscars, etc. to be in my movies because you're a natural star, son!" you would have some more bad movies coming your way because I would jump at the chance, and I would choose to believe the producer even though he was lying when he said I didn't suck.

He is over that age of majority and could change his dumb name at anytime.

Not everywhere. Many places, you must have a reason. There are some barriers to name changes to help prevent people from doing bad things under one name, then changing to another to avoid their past. Though, as an actor, he could go by any name he wanted. You don't need a name change to get billing as anything else.

What movie HAS he screwed up? He's actually a fine actor. He brings a certain level of intensity to his roles, sure, but all things considered he's actually quite good. Watch him again in Transformers, which fanboys seem to hate, but which made a sesquipedillion dollars. I found him entirely believable, even if all the rest of the movie was not. I don't get the Shia hate around here.

Tom Cruise is fine actor. Yes, he's nuttier than a fruitcake, but he has a good screen presence and is a real leading man, when we have so few in Hollywood. The last Mission Impossible was quite good, actually. You are missing out.

A clause in the George Lucas / Disney deal prohibits Han from ever shooting first. Lucas insisted. Disney had no objection, characters destined to ride floats down Main St during Disneyland parades are not allowed to shoot first.

There's a new Death Star being built by the remnants of the trade federation army, being led by a young and brash Jedi (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who's being turned by the haunting apparitions of Emperor Palpatine and Count Dooku. To test their new, fully operational battle station, they use it to blow up Corellia, killing most of the inhabitants. As the Millennium Falcon sweeps in, piloted by Chewbacca and his protegee (Shia LaBeouf), to see if anyone survived, it's hit by a largish rectanguar piece of debris, causing the Falcon to yet again lose its precarious sensor dish. The Falcon sweeps around to see what hit them and pick it up, and they discover that Han Solo survived. He escaped in a Corellian intergalactic-class refrigerator that was flung from the explosion at less than 4 parsecs.

Personally, I'm of the exact opposite opinion. If you're gonna do an Episode VII, it has to have Han Solo in it. What I'm unsure of is bringing Harrison Ford back in. He was already a big part of ruining Indiana Jones for a current generation of moviegoers. I don't want to see a repeat performance with Star Wars.

I became very disappointed(I was trying to be optimistic) when Disney had c-3po(Poorly costumed) and r2d2 showing up in the disney kiddie shows that my kids watch, and I try to tolerate in the background. I want to say the show was Ant Farm... I thought the angry birds co-branding was as washed out as it could get, I was wrong.

Han Solo, or Han Solo's dad? It has been quite a while since he was in a Star Wars film, and he isn't really readily recognizable as Han Solo any more. It might be easier to find a younger (or younger-looking) actor to take the role if you want it to make sense and not be a tale of Han Solo's retirement.

Actually, a 70-year-old Han Solo sounds like an interesting character. I wonder where the hero of the rebellion would end up, 40 years later. If the screenwriters have the creativity and freedom to actually develop the character, that is. More likely we'll see a 70-year-old version of exactly the same 30-year-old smuggler, which would be a sad joke.

What the 70 year old prince consort of the Nation of Aldebran refugees?
He's a politician now but his rough edges still crop up from time to time, especially as senility creeps in. He keeps the Millenium Falcon in a local hangar, with a full time crew required to keep it operational. Every few years he flies to Tattoine and finds one of Greedo's releatives to shoot (first of course). He even occasionally tries on a old battered Fedora and pulls out a whip while forgetting which universe he's actually in

As much as I'd like to see movie versions of Mr. Zahn's 'Thrawn' Triology, a line in 'Return of the Jedi' stands out to me, when Mon Mothma and Admiral Ackbar are discussing the assault on the Forest Moon of Endor.

I think it's Ackbar who addresses Han as 'General Solo' for the first time and Luke is rather surprised that his friend got promoted while he was busy back on Degobah.

Imagine, if you will, Ford as the aged, weathered space admiral who's seen it all, from Imperial recruit, to smuggler, to rebel pi

All the over-the-top criticisms about how much George Lucas sucked and how anyone could do a better job and how he's just milking the franchise (6 moves in 30 years and a handful of TV projects?). You're about to get pile drived by reality. You're going to see what it looks like when a corporation REALLY milks a franchise to get their 4 billion back in one CEO terms. You're going to see what a REAL mass-appeal version of Star Wars looks like with Disney-developed child stars and some schmuck producer's pet actress/mistress on the billboard. And, unlike the prequels, you're REALLY going to find out what it feels like to turn your back on a franchise instead of nerd raging about how you will after your last ThinkGeek purchase.

Yes, but why was it dying? I'm convinced it's declining health was largely due to no one having the balls to tell George Lucas what parts of his movies were salvageable and which parts were absolutely shit.

Like, anyone working on Episode one. Pod racing specifically. Anyone say "Hey, uh, maybe we cut pod racing down to a few minutes. Or out entirely?" Jar Jar Binks. Anyone mention to George that putting a minstrel in Star Wars was idiotic? No, of course not. He's fucking George Lucas. Nevermind that he had a lot of help making the movies that were decent.

And it's sad that a race was the most entertaining part of a freakin' Star Wars film.
The downfall was not having them race down the L.A. River. Everyone knows that you are supposed to race down the L.A. River. It doesn't matter where or when your movie is set.

Now, now. There was nothing wrong with the pod racing, at least compared to anything in the original trilogy. It was all the other crap. In facyt, in the Red letter Media review of the movies, I don't think Mr. Plinkett really rails on the Pod Racing at all. The stupid wager Qui-Gonn makes BEFORE the racing, now that was dumb. I actually remember the pod racing as being the best part of the movie.

The problem was that Lucas was too rich and too capable of doing whatever he wanted regardless of input. It was a hard fast rule of the original trilogy that the better the film, the less Lucas directly had to do with it. The problem with the prequels is that Lucas was deeply involved. He was literally able, especially by the prequels, to do anything he wanted it, and did it all to excess. The prequels had every flaw in Lucas's inabilities with plotting and dialogue that the old films did, but magnified many times over.

But worst of all, even under good direction, I think the prequels would have been lame. We already knew the outline of what had happened; that the Old Republic fell, that the Emperor perverted Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader, that Skywalker's children had been separated so that the Emperor could not gain both of them. The prequels were inevitably going to be little more than a "fill in the blanks" exercise, and would be necessarily anticlimactic. But Lucas could even do that exercise right; throwing in midichlorians, pointless characters, theme worlds and dull chase scenes, not to mention not even being able to stick to the elements of the story line as they stood at the end of RotJ. One of the most jarring things to me was Padme dying immediately after giving birth to Luke and Leia, when we know from RotJ that Leia was old enough to vaguely remember her mother.

I have some hope that a return of the original main characters and under solid new direction with writers not hampered by Lucas's problems and desire to transform Star Wars from Hidden Fortress In Space to some sort of political statement, this new trilogy can at least recapture some of the old spirit.

Luke: Do you remember your mother? Your real mother?Leia: Just a little bit. She died when I was very young.Luke: What do you remember?Leia: Just images, really. Feelings.Luke: Tell me.Leia: She was very beautiful. Kind, but sad.

Leia, by then, more than likely knew she was adopted. Bail Organa would have told her. Otherwise, when Luke said "your real mother" I presume that Leia would have been all "WTF do you mean, my REAL mother??"

You know, I wonder if Lucas understood that the prequels would necessarily be a "fill in the blanks" excercise and tried to avert that with all that added shit that nobody liked. I don't think he's by any means as completely out of touch as many think. I think he's every bit is incompetent as your post portrays him though so I think he tried to fill out the already carved in stone narrative with bad ideas not knowing the difference between good ideas and bad ones anymore.

But worst of all, even under good direction, I think the prequels would have been lame. We already knew the outline of what had happened; that the Old Republic fell, that the Emperor perverted Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader, that Skywalker's children had been separated so that the Emperor could not gain both of them. The prequels were inevitably going to be little more than a "fill in the blanks" exercise, and would be necessarily anticlimactic

Based upon watching The Clone Wars TV series, I have to disagree. You walk into the series knowing all of the key points about main characters and the war as a whole, republic wins, Palpatine is secretly a sith, etc. Almost every episode is better than any prequel movie when it comes to plot, dialogue and characters. If this team would have been given the reigns to develop the prequel movies and Lucas only played a consulting role... I think the galaxy far far away would have been much better.

Oh, I think the prequels could have been done better, but ultimately we know how the story goes, and most importantly we know the ending. Certainly better writers could have told it far far better, but I still think that sequels are ultimately going to stand up better than prequels.

The chief problem now is whether they're going to deal with the bazillion novels and comics that make up the Expanded Universe. If they try to fit these films into that universe, they may suffer a lot of the same problems the pre

Knowing the ending doesn't make the journey necessarily less enjoyable. I've re-read books. I've re-watched movies. Knowing the ending (without knowing the plot) isn't an issue. Even knowing the plot isn't a show-stopper. Shakespeare is still popular, curiously more popular among those who have read it. So those who know the plot best enjoy it most.

The problem was that Lucas was too rich and too capable of doing whatever he wanted regardless of input. It was a hard fast rule of the original trilogy that the better the film, the less Lucas directly had to do with it. The problem with the prequels is that Lucas was deeply involved. He was literally able, especially by the prequels, to do anything he wanted it, and did it all to excess. The prequels had every flaw in Lucas's inabilities with plotting and dialogue that the old films did, but magnified ma

I disagree with the idea that the prequels could only be a fill-in-the blank affair: the same could have been said for the LotRs trilogy but it still managed to be turned into something enjoyable with near-universal appeal (Pippen and Merry seem to have their own following, for instance) even though whether you read the book(s) or not the ending seemed like a fore-gone conclusion.

Not to mention star wars was the star destroyers, storm troopers, xwings, tie fighters, and generally a junked up craft design, instead we get like 1980's portrayal of 'future tech' sleek and glossy crap designs, and not a single thing of the star wars set / ship design that made star wars, star wars.

I have some hope that a return of the original main characters and under solid new direction with writers not hampered by Lucas's problems and desire to transform Star Wars from Hidden Fortress In Space to some sort of political statement, this new trilogy can at least recapture some of the old spirit.

I believe that said transformation actually began before ESB hit the screens, and 2 years after ANH came out. I distinctly recall that the third time ANH made the rounds, the scene with Han and Greedo was cut short. Immediately after Han says "Yes, I bet you have," the scene cut away to the bickering among the brass scene on the Death Star. So not only did Han not shoot first in that version, he didn't shoot at all.

For years, I thought that perhaps that was just a damaged spot on that particular copy of the film that my theater had received. But when the "Greedo shot first" incident came about, that put that other incident in a whole new light.

What??? No pod racing? You don't understand the Star Wars formula. Every movie has to have a vertigo inducing chase that forces some of us to turn away from the big screen.

IV -- trench run attack on the Death Star.
V -- attack on Hoth, cockpit views
VI -- speeders through the forest (actually redwoods in NorCal, which everyone should visit at least once)

Pod racing held true to the formula. Unfortunately, I was so turned off by everything *else* in that movie that I couldn't muster the interest to see the others. I don't know if they had good big screen freek-out chases or not. That was just part of the beauty of those movies though. They could give you the 3-d freakout without glasses.

Star Wars may be the brainchild of Lucas, but Gary Kurtz is what gave it its soul. My theory is that once Kurtz and Lucas split after Empire, the franchise was toast. Kurtz wanted Jedi to be much darker, Lando and the Falcon were to be destroyed during the battle, and no happy teddy bear celebration at the end. In my mind, this would have been a much more powerful film.

If you look at the tone of Jedi, especially the Ewoks, it is easy to see that Lucas was starting to get no critical feedback of his ideas. Kurtz filled this role. Without him, the franchise falls apart and we wind up with the crap that was the prequels. Lucas is a terrible director on his own. Just awful.

This is why I have high hopes for Ep. 7- Lucas is out the door, and Abrams probably understands what Star Wars means to the fans better than Lucas ever did. I just hope that Ford's role isn't too similar to Nemoy's role in Abram's Star Trek movie... a star cameo that helps our protagonist when he needs it most.

It would to my mind have been a much more confused film. The original movies were black and white, good and bad, clean cut heroic fantasy. Introducing nuances like the rough diamond hero perishing would have jarred even more than Jar Jar.

Nobody told Christopher Nolan how awful the last Batman film was with like, 90 minutes of pure pablum.
Nobody told Peter Jackson how awful The Hobbit, episode 1 was with like, 2 hours of pure cgi wanking.
Nobody told JJ Abrams how completely ridiculous the screenplay to Star Trek was by... AGAIN!!! using time travel... and Spock Prime(Spock Prime? What is that, where you get your time travel even faster?)

We have entered a new realm here, a realm where directors ruin films that could be great, but end up ok, or passable.
Why?
Because they can't help themselves, and there is an "Emperor Wears no Clothes" mindset with these guys.

And, nobody told you the difference between hyperbolic, headline-grabbing crucifixion and thoughtful criticism. Most of these sci-fi movies that induce Slashdot nerd rage seems to somehow build up a big fan base, revenue, and many-many repeat viewings. Yet, the critically acclaimed sci-fi flicks get nothing more than quiet whimpering over how poor the quality is of your pirated copy.

Two characters from Star Wars were completely and totally awesome: Han Solo and Darth Vader. Han wasn't in the prequels at all. Vader got maybe 5 minutes of screen time and IIRC Vader doesn't even force choke someone, threaten people, or do any other badassery in that 5 minutes. He just whines and breaks stuff. The decision to bring back just about everyone in the Star Wars universe except for its two resident badasses is just as terrible as all of those Police Academy movies that happened after Steve

What's unfortunate about Jar Jar is that his character design was in my opinion - really fricken good. He's also the only one of his kind who acts like a damned sideshow. His character could have easily be changed to be more useful and more like the others. Perhaps he could have been an honorable but slightly clumsy warrior or something. Something perhaps more deserving of that senate seat he would get later on.

News flash.... The character of Jar Jar isn't supposed to be a particularly likeable one... he's supposed to be an incompetent goof whose gullibility directly leads to Senator Palpatine's ascent to power as Emperor.

I am old enough to remember watching Episode IV in the theater in its first run in 1977 (mainly remember my dad going "Wow!" a lot). And yes, when I was a kid, Star Wars was the THING. I remember my dad buying my brother and I our first figurines; Darth Vader, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Obiwan, Chewbacca , Princess Leia and a Storm Trooper, in the days before toys had to be safe and they came with little tiny detachable guns. I was very popular when I brought them to school.

I recently rewatched all six films from prequels through to original trilogy. I'll freely admit that Episode IV is pretty cheesy, but no worse than your average cowboy film, and part of its charm lies in the underlying goofiness. The most awkward parts of the first film are the Jedi mysticism, and I can imagine Alec Guinness coughing on some of the neo-hippy lines Obiwan was spouting. The second one, other than the Hoth battle which went on a little long, is by far still the best. In RotJ, the whole Jabba's Palace sequence just takes too long, but once we're into the action, it's a pretty decent film with an ending that ties up the loose ends.

The prequels just don't stand up. Elements are not bad, in particular Ewan McGregor's casting as Obiwan and the return of Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine. I won't go into how awful Jar Jar is, or how bad an actor Hayden Christensen is. Suffice it to say that, pull all the flash, and these are inferior works made by a guy who had made what was originally a whiz-bang set of adventure films with characters that you could care about, and turned into a ponderous bad-dialogue laden set of films where you really couldn't give a shit by the end if Padme died or whether Anakin became Darth Vader or not.

Horrible.... I remember when Star Wars was amazing... It's been dying a slow death the last 15 years

Or maybe you grew older and had more to compare it against. The kiddies with simple palettes and little experience seem to like episodes 1-3, much as we did when we were children during episode 4 and teenagers during episode 5. YMMV.

That;s the problem with memories.

You remember the original trilogy as being amazing and fantastic. And they were -- by 1977 standards. 35 years later, not so much. What you are actually remembering is not the movie itself but the feeling of amazement you felt when you first saw it.

You remember the original trilogy as being amazing and fantastic. And they were -- by 1977 standards. 35 years later, not so much. What you are actually remembering is not the movie itself but the feeling of amazement you felt when you first saw it.

I think they've stood up pretty well to the test of time. Part of that is that CGI still doesn't look real, the models used in the movies ring truer. Another part is there was no effort to try to produce something complicated in terms of plot, this was sheer larger than life pulp, end of story, and this is what a lot of people don't get - trying to make it more sophisticated wrecks that timeless effect, as we saw with the prequels. This world was never meant to be nuanced, it's a fairy tale in the best poss

The problem with that argument is that it has a very short window. It works perhaps for my pre-teen late 70's self. However, it doesn't work at all for:

Objective numbers for the audiences. If you adjust for inflation, Star Wars (original movie) is the second box office grosser of all time, barely being beaten out by Gone with the Wind. No other movie in the series even makes the top 10. I remember more than a month after the Star Wars release waiting in a line wrapping around the theater for a ticket. We'

It does have plenty of kids stuff, but it also has a lot of stuff that's completely over the top of most kids' heads (trade federation, galactic senate, etc.), and not to mention a lot of violence (in particular, Revenge of the Sith is PG-13). The original trilogy was more kid-friendly, but it was also adult-friendly (though the ewoks were pushing it). I don't think it's unreasonable at all that adults should expect to enjoy the films.

True enough. But his acting wasn't the problem with that movie. Karen Allen wasn't bad either. It was, well, parts of the plot, the script, and that weasely little fellow who wore black leather was swinging in the trees with the monkeys. For his part, Harrison Ford made that movie more palatable than any of the prequels since he, at least, was still likable.

Both Han Solo and Indie are action heroes though, and I mean let's face it, not too many people in their 70s make for an inspiring action hero. They can play almost any other role but there's a physical element to the two fisted pulp role.

Both Han Solo and Indie are action heroes though, and I mean let's face it, not too many people in their 70s make for an inspiring action hero. They can play almost any other role but there's a physical element to the two fisted pulp role.

Obviously Sean Connery is the exception to that rule.

Alec Guinness pulled it off as old Ben Kenobi in Episode 4. They are after all swinging light sabers not steel broadswords.:-)

I think he's referring to the original theatrical release where the episode number and title were not present. It was presented as "Star Wars". If I am not mistaken, the episode number and title, A New Hope, we added on subsequent at-home releases.

The very first cut did NOT have Episode IV in the crawl, because Fox made Lucas take it out. In every subsequent printing, he inserted it back in without telling them.

Kids these days! I was there, I was 11, it was just "Star Wars" and supposed to be a one-off, and only when we sat down and saw the crawl for Empire did we find out we're in the middle of a nine-part trilogy of trilogies, subsequently pared back to a hexology.

Indiana Jones was awesome.I loved the part, where Indy was on a plane and then he put an egg into the microwave, so that the stewaredess would come and clean it up.You know, she was blocking Indy's path to the toilet before. But he outsmarted her.Such an inspiring movie.

He's so freaking old now that for him to play Han, they're going to have to put that bajillion dollars into the computer animated version of him because his wrinkled and leathery face can't play the part unless they say he got aged 300 years by a sith or something. Same with Mark Hamil playing Luke Skywalker again.They are just too damn old for their original castings.

Aren't they moving into the next generation of characters? It is pretty easy for them to play their characters aged the same as the actors are, han grows up in the star wars world the same way harrison ford does.

I thought A New Hope and IV were added later, after it was successful and he put it as a movie in the middle of a serise. I have the first VHS printing of the trilogy around here somewhere, just no way to play it anymore to check.

The lines "Episode IV: A NEW HOPE" were added to the opening title crawl upon its 1981 re-release, one year after "Episode V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK" was released with its full title. The new opening crawl also capitalized the word 'Rebel' in 'rebel spies', which was not capitalized in the original 1977 opening crawl. This altered the formatting of the text to accommodate the two additional lines, and slightly changed the t

Actually Lucas had the vision of the 9 episode story arc from the beginning. 20th Century Fox was giving Lucas the time of day on Star Wars because American Graffiti had made a shit-ton of money for Universal Pictures, after Fox had passed on the project. They weren't going to chance making the same mistake twice. At the same time though, you have to remember to the world they inhabited in 1975 when this pitch was taking place. With the notable exception of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (and maybe Planet